My new guitar.

    

This guitar was made for me by Brian West of Fretco, who is an Adelaide based luthier.  His main business is guitar repairs, and he makes the odd custom guitar as a labour of love.  Mine is no exception.

The body is mahogony, with a cap of Tasmanian Blackwood, this is an Acacia, and the same family as Hawian Koa. The design of the body started as a standard Strat, however my thinking was quickly influenced by Paul Reed Smith guitars and soon evolved from an Anderson style drop-top, to a PRS fully carved top.  However, I wanted to keep the Fender influences, but change them to my taste.  Thus the cutaways are slightly deeper than a strat, and most obviously the rear of the guitar has an asymetric shape reminicent of the Jaguar/Jazzmaster body, but not so extreme.  The mahogany used for the body was very lightweight, and very resonant, even so the
body is semi-chambered, with the body routed so that the cap only touches at the outside and through the middle.

Finding the wood for the cap was a very drawn out affair, Brian finally located the wood as the private stock of a local wood merchant, who had earmarked it for use as gunstock blanks.  This particular piece fo blackwood was quite dark, and thus only a very mild stain was used to bring out the grain.  The pictures were taken under incandecent lights and were not colour corrected, showing the colours to be redder than they really are.  The guitar runs the full range of ambers in sunlight.

Other features fo the guitar are a Mann-Made tremolo, and Joe Barden pickups, the rear pickup is a Two-Tone pickup with the second sound selected by a pullup switch on the tone knob.  The headstock design was chosen after a lot of work by Brian.  The machines are Sperzel locking, and they were positioned to get a straight string pull through the nut, although the thinner than standard string winding on the machines has messed this up a bit.  The neck is bolted on without a back-plate, and uses well-nuts and bolts rather than wood screws.  This allows for a nicely rounded heel, and makes playing in the higher reaches a tiny bit more comfortable.  The neck is three piece mahogony, the central piece is quarter sawn, and comes from the same log as the body, the two side peices are symetrically back sawn.  The black stripes between the pieces are carbon fibre.  This is a strong neck.  The finger board is rosewood, 12 inch radius and uses 6105, wide-tall frets. Standard start 25 and a half inch scale length, and 22 frets.  However then nut width is 1 11/16 inch, which is not Strat spec, but something I find much more comfortable.  Somewhat in line with the flatter fretboard radius.